The Touch
by midnights shadow
Summary: A moment in time can change the world...


A Moment In Time

  
  


Summary: A single moment in "Tough Love" caught my eye. There are times when it is not the big events that will have the most consequences, but some small thing that will rock our very foundations.

  
  


Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon, ME, the networks and probably a few entities that I haven't named. I don't get rich off of this, or anything else for that matter. Don't sue. Thank you, Joss, for letting me play in your universe.

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It's such a small thing. The ability to reach out and touch someone when they are in pain. All you need to do is make the connection. A touch on the hand, a hand on the shoulder. Gentle words murmured next to someone's ear. All of it makes the pain a little less, makes the world a little less cold for the one in pain.

For an eternity, the hand stayed in the air. It hung there, like it had been painted on the air, like the hand of God on the Sistine chapel ceiling, reaching out but never quite touching another human.

If someone had studied it, it would not have been the most graceful of hands. The flesh was white, the nails clipped short and painted black. Neither was it artfully arranged. It stayed, cupped, as if the hand already was caressing the figure poised below. A test, maybe, to see if, indeed, the hand could conform to the shape beneath.

All of eternity hung for a moment in that hand. Never before had this taken place. Never before had a demon felt compassion for a human. Just a few more inches, just another incremental movement, and the touch would have been complete.

What worlds would have been shattered if the hand had descended. What gods would have danced in their heavens, and what demons would have wailed, what gnashing of teeth and hand wringing would have followed if that hand had made that simple touch.

But time, the enemy, made a mockery of the moment and stole that blending of heaven and hell. Ruthlessly, it moved though and around the cataclysmic event. It forced the hand to stay, stilled for a moment too long, just as it forced the recipient of the all encompassing touch to move.

Dawn raised her tear stained face to Spike and the hand, which had hovered in that eternity, was snatched back. 

The restless universe never shuddered that the moment had been lost, that indeed, the moment might never come again. The stars continued to wheel about the heavens, the planets spun in their orbits, comets sped through the blackness, trailing their endless debris.

*~*~*~*~

The vision faded and the old man opened his eyes and looked around. The dusty road was the same as it always had been, a small trail over the hills and through the olive groves that eventually gathered itself into a larger lane that led to the small hillside city below.

He rose to his feet, grunting with the effort. His bones creaked and crackled, joints rubbing each other painfully after too much life and too much time together, just another small noise in the restless grove of olive trees. Another old man waited in the city for him, fretfully moving the checkers back and forth across the board, so carefully and slowly he began to walk the dirt path down the slope.

Eons had passed since the key had been made. Eons and time unknowing since he and the key had been together. He was the gatekeeper. He was not there to keep anyone from the gate, his duty was not to guard. He was there to record. His records were endless, encompassing worlds and events, millions of them, and an unfathomable number more. He had watched as the key had changed and shaped this and other universes for time without end.

Always the key was the center, and always he the watcher. But for now, the universe would stay the same. Change would not come so easily. The spark to set the infinite tumbling again had been choked back, snatched away in the shift of a hand. 

Perhaps this time, he thought, he would win the checker game. But no matter. There would be another game tomorrow.

Author's note: I wrote this story after I awoke one Thursday morning. It took me a few minutes longer to write than I had anticipated, so I was running late for work. I left the house about 15 minutes later than I normally would have, although still in good shape to make it to work on time without rushing. (I am one of those people that arrive at work a half hour early, the better to get ready for the day...) But I had an accident on my way to work. I was in a lane I normally wouldn't have been in, except that I had been directed there by a police officer directing traffic around another accident up ahead. Someone, trying to make a left turn, and probably in somewhat of a hurry, ran into the side of my car. No one, thankfully, was badly hurt. But it is ironic that I had been thinking that just a moment in time can change your world. Just those extra fifteen minutes that morning made a world of difference in my life. How small a thing to be running a few minutes late. I had to be late to be in that accident. Life is an iron, and my life, ironic. 


End file.
